Tantra IV - viii Parenthood & Poetics

One aspect of tantra is easily forgotten, especially in its neo-tantra appropriation - that the whole business is not anti-procreative. Indeed, there is an emotional connection made between the 'divinity' of the experience (in essence, representing the incommunicability of the actual experience to third parties) and the force of the love that will imbue the creative act that is the creation of life. This unscientific view - purely sentimental but expressive of the very essence of a bonding between lovers who become parents and which then is transferred to the biological bond with a child - is part of the poetic essence of tantric discourse. It is easily comprehensible as an expression of otherwise inexpressible feelings that many lovers who become parents have felt.

It is this poetic aspect of tantra that we return to time and time again. It raises the old question of whether poetry is true and the obvious answer is yes and no. It is not true as a reliable communication about the material world and its manipulability nor about the functional relationships required to make society work, but it is 'true' as the best elliptical means of expressing something of the actuality (the truth) of sentiment or feeling. We come full circle here because the purpose of these postings was to get away from the Sanskrit gobbledygook and mindless appropriation of a lost traditionalist culture, often appropriated in order to have an excuse, in a weirdly tut-tutting culture, for good sex. And yet we should not fall into the fallacy of seeing tantra as only a technology of power (which is the core of the bulk of the analysis in earlier postings).

Once the traditionalist 'religious' superstructure has been removed and the 'technology' re-envisioned for our world, there remains a core of poetry to deal with at the heart of the experience - not so much the reality of the divine as the analogy of the divine to express the reality of the experience. This comes down to various sentimental (in a positive not negative use of the term) attitudes on the theme of love: love of existing (against the ascetic trend of the culture), love of oneself, love of the other and love of what is to be created. In this sense, it is far more impressive as a poetic tradition masquerading as a spirituality than the simple commands of the New Testament which lend themselves to authoritarian diktat - 'you will love or you will be damned, you low life bastard!' One is reminded of the nun who used to rap my father's knuckles with a ruler saying, 'Remember, Pendry, God is Love, God is Love!'

The myth of tantra would have a fully (potentially) divinised person necessarily to be born of the yogini. This is very interesting when you consider the social position of the yogini when compared to that of the traditional wife and mother in the average household. It is as if what is being said is that the divine child will always come from the highest state of appropriate transgression. There is a certain sentimental rightness about this, even though the final state of the child, his or her happiness and stability, is not going to come from the way he or she was produced but only from the way he or she is treated once he or she is in the world. The poetics are material and social nonsense but they are not emotional nonsense. They express intent, desire, hope and aspiration and, if taken seriously, increase the chances that the intent, desire, hope and aspiration will come to fruition. They are, in short, the epitome of magical thinking.